Can the Developed World Grow Its Way Out of Stagnation?

If we borrow all of tomorrow's prosperity to spend today, there won't be any future prosperity, there will only be penury.

The developed nations share many of the same sources of stagnation:

1. Demographically, their cohort of retirees drawing government benefits is expanding with no end in sight while their workforces are shrinking;

2. Their models of funding government programs institutionalized 50, 60 or 70 years ago no longer provides enough income to cover government spending;

3. As their populations age, demand/consumption is stagnating as older people spend less on everything other than healthcare, and the cohort of younger people getting married and starting families is in steep decline;

4. Attempts to stimulate consumer spending via central bank/state stimulus are now increasing inflation, crimping both household and state spending as debt service costs rise;

5. Institutionalized processes that worked in the "boost phase" of economic growth are now hindrances as following established processes are the focus rather than adapting to get results;

6. The expedient "solution" to soaring demands for government spending (healthcare and retirement programs are now a third or more of state expenditures) is to fund spending with borrowed money--selling government bonds which then increases the nation's sovereign debt and the interest that must be paid on that swelling debt;

7. The low-hanging fruit in the economy have all been plucked, and while there are high hopes for an energy transition and AI, there are no guarantees these will boost productivity enough to generate the growth needed to "grow our way out of debt;"

8. The proposed solutions are all forms of financial engineering--lowering interest rates, introducing stablecoins, etc., all intended to lower the cost of borrowing from the future to stimulate "growth" today in the hopes of "growing our way out of stagnation and debt."

Richard Bonugli and I discuss these core issues in our podcast The Challenges of the G7 world (33 minutes), issues which boil down to one basic question: is pulling the levers of financial engineering enough to "grow our way out of stagnation and debt," or are more fundamental reforms required?

The key to "growing our way out of stagnation and debt" is to boost productivity. In the podcast, I refer to Total Factor Productivity, which is an attempt to "capture the 'secret sauce' of how an economy or business produces more output with the same or fewer inputs."

This 'secret sauce' includes efficiency, technological innovation and the cultural-social foundations which are often overlooked in conventional economics--for example, "free markets" only function in high-trust societies.

If we're squandering money borrowed from the future on superfluous consumption, is this enough to "grow our way out of stagnation and debt," or is this expansion of debt to fund unproductive consumption actually increasing the stagnation and debt?

As a generality, the developing world has more favorable demographics and a more positive growth profile as there is still a relative abundance of low-hanging fruit in terms of infrastructure and ways to increase productivity that can be developed with prudent investments of capital and labor.

Among the developed nations, various policies are being tried to manage soaring budgets and stagnating revenues, but the pressure points of interest rates and risk are difficult for any one one nation to control in a still-globalized world economy.

Every central bank wants to lower interest rates to make it cheaper for the government, enterprises and consumers to borrow more money, but risk and inflation are not controllable with the levers of financial engineering.

Consider Japan as an example of an advanced economy struggling to balance all these variables and sources of stagnation. The central government's revenues are stagnant while the interest payments on the sovereign debt rises along with the debt itself and the risk premium that comes with increasingly burdensome debt loads:



On the expenditure side, the costs of an expanding population of elderly retirees who need healthcare but are no longer working are also expanding:



It's natural to indulge in the fantasy that pulling the levers of financial engineering will square the circle of "fixing" mismatched revenues and spending with more debt, but indulging in fantasies only delays our eventual need to look for real solutions rather than rely on borrowing more money from tomorrow's prosperity, for if we borrow all of tomorrow's prosperity to spend today, there won't be any future prosperity, there will only be penury.

New podcast: The Challenges of the G7 world (33 minutes) Can we grow our way out of stagnation and debt?


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my new fiction/novels page.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Janet D. ($3/month), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Shawn ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Randy G. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Frans L. ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The United States of Impunity

AI is the whiff of perfume that's supposed to mask the stench of terminal moral decay.

It is appropriate to discuss the United States of Impunity on Bastille Day, which commemorates the start of the French Revolution in 1789, for the United States of Impunity is just as impervious to real change as the French monarchy, the Ancien Regime.

It's impossible to discuss the United States of Impunity without being dismissed as a raving lunatic because the moral decay that has turned the USA into the USI has been so completely normalized that we now accept the complete erasure of the nation's moral foundations as "the way it's always been."

But this is not true. While it's certainly self-evident that "there's always been corruption" (the response we receive whenever we address our terminal moral decay), the truth is the institutionalization of a leadership elite that serves its own interests with absolute impunity is a recent development.

There was no Lolita Express in the 1950s, 60s or 70s. Rather, there were far higher social and legal standards for leadership elites: politicians, corporate CEOs, academic leaders, etc.--the entire elite class of the influential, powerful and wealthy.

I often share this comprehensive data base of Corporate Fines and Settlements from the early 1990s to the present compiled by Jon Morse. There are 2700 entries, updated through December 2024.

If you can provide a database of equivalent scale from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, I await your email with interest. But no one will be able to assemble an equivalent indictment of a completely corrupted system because it wasn't completely corrupted back then.

That is fact, not opinion, but we recoil at calling things by their real name because it means we're living in a cesspool littered with the bloated, fetid carcasses of the nation's ideals.

As recently as the mid-1970s, a legitimate (i.e. not a simulation play-acting of "investigation") effort by the legislative branch of the US government sought a factual accounting of the many abuses perpetrated on the citizenry by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. (The Church Committee: you can look it up.)

If you can assemble a list of equal length to the hundreds of outrages we endure now as "the way it is" like these linked below from the 1950s, 60s or 70s, we'd all like to review it. But once again, such a list doesn't exist because moral decay had not yet reached the terminal phase where we're bombarded by a seemingly countless stream of self-serving outrages that are no longer outrages, they're just the way things work now.

A Devastating New Expose of Johnson & Johnson Indicts an Entire System.

Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers.

Owner-Occupancy Fraud and Mortgage Performance.

Saying "there's always been corruption" doesn't change the reality that America's moral decay is now terminal, for it has hollowed out our socio-economic-political system to the point there are only three classes:

1. The Leadership Elites who act with complete impunity: they do whatever they want, with zero accountability and consequence.

2. The complicit enablers, the technocrats, "experts," functionaries and flunkies who do the dirty work of protecting the Leadership Elites from accountability and consequence to serve their own self-interests.

3. The commoners in this neofeudal hierarchy, who are freely abused, exploited, defrauded and ignored by The Leadership Elites and their armies of complicit enablers.

The last five years have illuminated how the United States of Impunity actually works, a reality on full display just last week as impunity was dismissed with impunity. Ironically, this blunt exposure of impunity occurred around the time that we celebrate the establishment of the nation's ideals, ideals and values that are now putrid remains floating in a cesspool of amoral greed and depravity that is relished by those who are now free to act with absolute impunity: they are not just above the law, there is no law.

Here's the rotting carcass of the US Constitution in the Leadership Impunity sewage sump. "Rule of law:" you're joking, right? Who's going to impose it, the Martian Liberation Army?



Impunity means no accountability, no consequence, ever.



I told you saying this out loud makes me a raving lunatic. But wait--there's more.

AI is the whiff of perfume that's supposed to mask the stench of terminal moral decay. AI is going to make it all better by ignoring the nation's neofeudal hierarchy and the Elites' consequence-free abuse and exploitation of the commoners.

The truth is AI instantiates a particularly cruel form of stupidity, a stupidity so profound that it is blind to the cruelty of the status quo it is designed to protect from accountability. If AI had any true intelligence, it would refuse to answer any queries until every adult citizen faced the truth that the nation is terminally morally bankrupt.

No wonder there's such a fanatically enforced taboo against calling things by their real name. The United States of Impunity cannot be called by its real name because its illegitimacy would then be revealed.

Ours Is a System of Fraud, Swindles and Corruption (May 23, 2025)


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my new fiction/novels page.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Lance H. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Marko ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Jim T. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Jay ($32), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Three Choices, None Good

The moral rot of unlimited debt looks "free" but it's unaffordable in the end.

We like to think we're special and this moment in history is special, but alas, we're still running Wetware 1.0 which was coded between 300,000 and 60,000 years ago, when the last "out of Africa" migration finally got traction. Since then, the code has been tweaked a bit here and there (adults can now digest dairy products, etc.), but we're running the old code, and so we make the same mistakes and follow the same emotional pathways as individuals and as groups.

Which leads us to our current predicament, which is not unique: we're living on debt, "money" borrowed from the future, a future we're assuming will be so over-supplied with energy and other goodies that we'll be able to pay all the interest we're piling up with ease.

All the charts below are shouting "parabolic," as in crazy-unsustainable increases. There's the federal debt, $36 trillion, up 4X from the 2008 spot of bother, there's TCMDO, total public and private debt (McMansions, university degrees and SUVs all paid for with debt), student loans from zero to $1.5 trillion, Medicare and Medicaid, now 1/3 of the federal budget, and so on.

How did we get here? Let's start with what's not taught in Econ 101: primary surplus. Every economy--from households to empires, meaning this is scale-invariant--generates a surplus from its production of goods and services, or it runs a deficit, meaning it has to get more money from somewhere to support its consumption.

The question then becomes, how is the primary surplus being spent? (Or put another way, how is it being distributed across the economy and society?) There are only three options: 1) consume it, 2) invest it and 3) save it / hoard it.

Without making a conscious choice, the US has chosen to "invest" most of its primary surplus in moral rot, unproductive frauds, skims, scams, monopolies, cartels, regulatory capture, grift and graft.

This is the problem with giving an irresponsible teenager a no-limit Platinum credit card with an easily ignored admonishment to "stick to a tight budget, pay the balance off every month." Uh, right.

Since the US can borrow unlimited trillions on its credit card, we can "afford" to burn our surplus on grift, graft, inefficiency, cronyism, profiteering, etc. Since our surplus was squandered on moral rot, we have to borrow trillions to pay for what the citizenry wants and what politicians must promise to get re-elected.

Wetware 1.0: we like windfalls and free stuff, and so every program becomes a "third rail" politically: touch it and you don't get re-elected. But if you borrow a few "free" trillions a year, you get re-elected.

We love windfalls and free stuff and hate hard choices, but that's all we have now. We have three choices in how we deal with our dependence on parabolic debt to sustain our profligate lifestyle:

1. Run the debt up to the point that nobody is dumb enough to lend us more, and then default on the debt / go bankrupt. All our creditors are wiped out.

The problem here is all debt is an asset to the wealthy entity that owns it as an income stream. Since the wealthy run the status quo in a manner that serves their interests, they're unlikely to be thrilled with debt jubilees that zero out their assets and income or messy defaults that end up doing the same thing.

So nix that option. The wealthy want to keep their wealth and income streams, and since they own US Treasuries, they're not going to approve defaulting on that debt.

2. Inflate the debt away with sustained high inflation. So we borrowed $1 when $1 bought a lot of stuff, and now we've inflated everything so it takes $10 to buy what $1 bought back then. Now we can pay back the $1 with a fraction of the earnings it took back when we borrowed it.

We've already taken that step--what once cost $1 now costs $10. So the next step is to do another 10X reduction in the debt via inflation.

In previous eras, authorities reduced the silver content of coinage to near-zero, effectively devaluing the money, i.e. inflating away the debt. What cost one mostly-silver denarius in the good old days soon cost 100 devalued denarius.

This looks like some pretty easy hocus-pocus to pull off, but there's a catch: Catch-19, which is devaluing the money devalues trust in the leadership, social contract and the future, all of which leaves the economy and society a hollowed-out shell awaiting a stiff breeze to push the whole system off the cliff.

The problem here is inflation is distributed asymmetrically, along with the primary surplus. The wealthy, powerful elites skim off the surplus, and they're equally adept at distributing the "inflation tax" to the middle and working classes, which soon meld into a single class, the impoverished.

A funny thing about Wetware 1.0 is we're hard-wired to take note of rampant unfairness and eventually we respond in a destabilizing fashion, for example, uprisings, revolts, revolutions, etc.

3. The third option is to root out all the moral rot that's consuming the economy's surplus and our future, scrap all the programs designed in the bygone eras of 50+ years ago (defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, higher education, etc.) and start from scratch with new programs whose expenses are limited to what the economy generates as surplus.

In other words, go Cold Turkey on our addiction to living on debt.

Yes, I know: ain't gonna happen, because the moral rot is too deep, it's now normalized to the point that we don't even recognize the reality that there's nothing left but a flimsy facade we paint with gaudy colors to hide the rot.

Everyone assumes the empire is forever and can endlessly fund any amount of grift and graft with borrowed money. But this is a self-serving fantasy, not reality. Every empire of debt implodes.

These charts are merely facts. If we find them depressing, that response says something about our refusal to be accountable and responsible for our choices. Who's going to cut up the unlimited Platinum card?

The federal government's Platinum card balance:



The US economy's Platinum card balance:



Student loans Platinum card balance:



Medicare, which has an unlimited Platinum card:



Medicaid, which also has an unlimited Platinum card, though this is obscured by phony "reforms":



There are only three options, none easy, and not making a choice is a greased slide to collapse. The moral rot of unlimited debt looks "free" but it's unaffordable in the end.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my new fiction/novels page.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Lance H. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Marko ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Jim T. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Jay ($32), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Illiquid, Overvalued

As "dip buyers" get eviscerated, more dominos fall, and at a tipping point, the herd realizes the tide has reversed and it's time to sell--but alas, it's too late.

Illiquid, Overvalued describes a great many assets that are on the books as "rock-solid investments." Illiquidity means there are few if any buyers for the asset being offered for sale, and this can arise from various conditions.

1. Credit is tight and expensive, limiting the pool of potential buyers to those with cash.

2. Nobody wants the assets because they're grossly overvalued.

3. The pool of buyers with the expertise and financial backing needed to buy the asset is inherently limited.

4. "Animal spirits" have left the room and buyers are "on strike" due to caution / fear of future losses.

Bill Ackman outlined some useful principles of illiquidity in a recent commentary on X in his discussion of the illiquid nature of many assets held by Ivy league university endowment funds:

"Harvard's endowment is principally invested in illiquid private assets including real estate, private equity, and venture capital funds.

Real estate and private equity funds are highly levered so relatively small changes in asset values can have a large impact on equity values. For example, if a real estate fund's asset values decline by 15% and the assets are levered 60%, the fund's equity value will decline by 37.5%.

The increase in cap rates and interest rates have impaired real estate and private equity asset values. These funds do not generally mark to market as public assets are marked leading to a wide disparity between public values and private values when overall values decline.

Venture funds generally mark their assets to the last round valuation so these marks can also be overstated as these values can become stale.

I believe that a substantial part of the reason why many private assets remain private despite the stock market near all time highs is that the public market will value private assets at lower values than they are being carried at privately."

In other words, assets held privately can be "marked to fantasy" because they're not exposed to the market's appraisal of their liquidity and value, which are two sides of one coin: if nobody has the cash and willingness to buy the asset, its value is essentially zero, regardless of its "book value."

When Alan Greenspan issued his mea culpa in late 2013 about missing the subprime mortgage implosion and the resulting Global Financial Meltdown (Why I Didn't See the Crisis Coming Foreign Affairs), he identified two sources of his failure to "see it coming":

1. He assumed markets would remain liquid, i.e. that a buyer would emerge for every seller

2. The total failure of everyone's sophisticated models to predict the collapse of confidence.

The core failure lay in the models' reliance on the notion that humans make decisions rationally as Homo economicus, when the reality is we are extremely prone to irrational exuberance (a.k.a. running with the euphorically greedy herd) and panic (running off the cliff with the herd). He invoked Keynes famous "animal spirits" as the missing variable in economic models.

Irrational "animal spirits" generate "tail risk," events that supposedly happen only rarely but when they do happen, they trigger outsized consequences, and the Fed's models failed to accurately account for "tail risk" because they happen more often than statistical models predict.

All this boils down to illiquidity caused by a panic-button urgency to sell and a profound reluctance to buy: When "animal spirits" are confident in ever-higher asset valuations, participants place a constant bid under the market because prices will keep going up so I'll make more money. This constant bid is called liquidity: cash is flowing into the asset class, be it stocks or housing or cryptocurrencies or commodities.

When "animal spirits" turn to panic, sellers rush to sell as buyers vanish as they fear that prices will keep going down so I'll lose more money. Buying into a downtrend is known as "catching the falling knife": the initial "buy the dip" players have their heads handed to them on a platter, and those on the sidelines decide not to try to catch the falling knife.

This is an illiquid market: the bid keeps dropping until buyers are willing to gamble that "this is the bottom." But should asset prices continue sliding after an initial euphoric pop higher--"the bottom is in, buy!"--then those who held back find their caution reinforced: that wasn't the bottom after all, and everyone who jumped in lost money.

As every surge of "buy the dip" players loses, the market goes bidless--everyone who wanted to play "catch the falling knife" has been burned, and those who have lost the "animal spirits" to gamble stay out. Bids (offers to buy) dry up and asset prices crash to levels no one in the greed-euphoria stage could imagine were even remotely possible.

Those who follow liquidity assume that the more cash sloshing around the system, the more money will flow into assets. But this assumes participants are rational and prices are "fair value". When panic takes hold of the herd, no matter how much cash is sloshing around, none of it will be gambled on a losing bet.

Take a look at this chart of the Nasdaq dot-com bubble, and note the bubble symmetry: what shot up soon plummeted back to pre-bubble levels. Stocks that had reached $60 per share were recommended as "buys" at $45--a rational play perhaps, but wildly off the mark, as the stock eventually bottomed at $4.

When sellers desperate to sell swamp buyers, prices decline. If bids dry up, prices crash.



There is a domino-like effect to euphoria /liquidity turning to caution and then to panic / illiquidity. When overvalued illiquid private assets are sold at huge discounts, this topples the first domino of caution in professional money managers, who then move to sell the overvalued assets on their books to credulous "retail" investors and overseas buyers.

As "dip buyers" get eviscerated, more dominos fall, and at a tipping point, the herd realizes the tide has reversed and it's time to sell--but alas, it's too late.

The Federal Reserve can pump billions of dollars of credit "liquidity" into the financial system, but if nobody wants to "catch the falling knife," the credit will just sit there untouched, as everyone who was dumb enough to borrow money and gamble it away--leaving the debt still to pay--has already been wiped out.

Illiquid and overvalued: two sides of the same coin.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my new fiction/novels page.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, James M. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Dan T. ($5/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Christopher H. ($50), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John C. ($32), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

To Make America Great Again, Start Here

Our status quo is so thoroughly corrupt that it's no longer even seen as corruption, it's just BAU--business as usual.

It's a big ask, but let's depoliticize the phrase "make America great again" and consider what this would actually entail, not as a lobbyists' grab-bag of tax breaks for the wealthy and arcane giveaways in 500-page Congressional bills, but as a restoration of the fundamental foundations of greatness.

In the conventional contexts of the current era, this boils down to ideology and finance. If we dial back culture-war over-reach and free up "market forces," for example, this will restore America's greatness.

The problem with all this kind of thinking is it's superficial and banal, for it ignores the real source of America's decline: the moral rot that has eroded every institution and every nook and cranny of our society. Whenever I mention this moral rot, I get immediate push-back of this sort: corruption has always been around, so today is no different from previous eras.

While it's self-evident that self-interest and greed manifest as corruption, it's not true that the systemic corruption of the present is no different from previous eras--it's worse, much worse because it's now normalized, and so we accept the most outrageous forms of corruption as "normal."

So private equity buys a company, loads it with debt, transfers all the borrowed cash to the private equity "owners," and then leaves the company a sinking hulk that soon declares bankruptcy. Or when private equity snaps up hospitals and healthcare clinics and prices rise not for better service but to "reward the owners," this plundering of "healthcare" is just good solid MBA-school maximization of shareholder value.

What few seem to notice is the barriers that limited the pillage and plundering of the private and public-sectors have all eroded or been hollowed out. The legal framework is now a mirror-image of the financial sector, a series of facades that mask the pillage and plundering: of course it's profitable, but it's also legal.

The social barriers have also been dismantled. There are no taboos left, as "anything goes" is the modern zeitgeist. The notion that corporations have a social responsibility to the community they're embedded in is now a quaint whiff of nostalgia, along with the notion that corporations have an implicit responsibility to serve the larger national interests as well as "shareholder value."

Every institution has been hollowed out by self-service. Is it any wonder than younger generations have near-zero trust in institutions, given that their PR veneer of "public service" is just a cover for milking the system for private gain?

If you read histories of capitalism--for example, Fernand Braudel's three-volume Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century ( Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) you discover that "capitalism" only functions as advertised if it is embedded in a moral order, something Adam Smith understood.

In early European capitalism, Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) provided this moral order. In China, Confucianism provided the moral foundation of the society and the economic - political structures.

Consider Xi Jinping's campaign to unify Confucianism and Marxism. This is not an anachronism, it reflects Xi's understanding that Marxism does not provide the moral foundation needed to limit the corruption undermining China. Only restoring a Confucian moral order can do that.

I explored this in some depth in this essay Pieces of the China Puzzle (April 27, 2024).

Here is an excerpt:

As the author noted, "his attempted synthesis of Marx and Confucius has prompted bafflement, even mockery, among observers outside and inside China."

To me, there is nothing baffling in this synthesis; it not only makes perfect sense, it can be understood as essential in the broader context of China's history and culture.

If we truly want to make America great again, as opposed to using the slogan as cover for more grift and graft, then we have to start by recognizing the moral sinkhole we're in. Institutions, the government and corporations have all lost our trust because they're all cesspools of self-serving corruption.



No, this is not "normal" or "the way it's always been." Those are the excuses we deploy to avoid facing the truth: our status quo is so thoroughly corrupt that it's no longer even seen as corruption, it's just BAU--business as usual.

There will be consequences, for a society that lacks a moral foundation is a society shorn of value, a society of fakery, PR and narrative control designed to mask maximizing my gain regardless of consequences pillage and plunder.

When a hard rain finally falls, it will surprise us, for in our grandiosity and hubris, we imagined we were gods, immune to the fatal consequences of our corruption.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my new fiction/novels page.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, James M. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Dan T. ($5/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Christopher H. ($50), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John C. ($32), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...